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https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale
Republicans in Congress just voted to reverse a landmark FCC privacy rule that opens the door for ISPs to sell customer data. Lawmakers provided no credible reason for this being in the interest of Americans, except for vague platitudes about "consumer choice" and "free markets," as if consumers at the mercy of their local internet monopoly are craving to have their web history quietly sold to marketers and any other third party willing to pay.
The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress.
So here [below in the article] is a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you, and how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 27 2017, @05:58AM (3 children)
Consumer protection laws should be the bailiwick of consumer protection agencies. They have the experience and the enforcement experience and capability that the FCC does not have.
This was always an FTC issue not an FCC issue.
Just like No Cellphone Usage in Airplanes was never an FAA concern, and should not have been an FAA regulation. It was always an FCC issue because the network design never anticipated one phone at 30,000 feet being able to light up 500 towers at once.
If your ISP was strictly within your state (not all that common any more) the Feds really had no reach anyway.
The solution is to fight hard for municipal broadband.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday November 27 2017, @07:16AM (2 children)
That's an interesting point. And would make a whole lot of sense too, except the FTC has no authority to regulate ISPs. That was the purview of the FCC. But the FCC has had that authority stripped from them. And the FTC has not been given the authority to do so. As such, *no one* has that authority.
Here's an article [techcrunch.com] discussing this issue.
And here are a few more just for good measure:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/324520-fcc-ftc-are-playing-a-shell-game-with-online-privacy [thehill.com]
http://adage.com/article/privacy-and-regulation/ftc-regain-isp-privacy-oversight-easy/308487/ [adage.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday November 27 2017, @09:34AM (1 child)
The problem is that "later". Sure, they could do that (and if you believe they will then I've got an ICO you might be interested in). Or they could defer "later" until it becomes "never" and the customer gets screwed over, just as the industry lobbyists wanted all along. Or, if the peons get too uppity, they can throw some ridiculous proposals out there and rely on the completely partisan two party system to gut it completely for the same result, then blame the other side of the aisle for all the problems. But hey, the free market and healthy competition will prevail, right?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:18PM
"The FTC vs. FCC jurisdictional thing"
If the FCC and FTC don't have the competency to hand the issue over in an unintrusive way, then they don't have the competency to manage the issue, period. Which is to say, that both are acknowledging that they are unwilling or unable to do the duties defined in their oaths.
The only reasonable response to that, is to eliminate the threat in perpetuity by breaking up the monopolies and passing regulation to keep them broken up. .